


Melting

by dreamoverdrive



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 00:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3915637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamoverdrive/pseuds/dreamoverdrive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tahno struggles with having lost and regained his bending in such a short time frame. Korra helps him through one of his weaker moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Melting

Tahno felt like he was melting.

He laid in his bed, silk sheets twisted in his white fists and eyes fixed on the ceiling. He forced air _in, out, in, out_ , and tried to pretend that he wasn’t turning into slush.

_You can bend now, Tahno. You can bend. For fuck’s sake you can bend, Tahno._

The mantra pounded in his head. He could bend. He could bend. He could bend. But he still lay there, unable to move, unable to breathe, feeling like there was something burning hot pressing down on his chest and melting the bones in his body into one brittle structure that would shatter if he so much as twitched.

“Tahno!”

He heard her voice outside the door and the weight of her fist pounding on the wood. If moving had been necessary before, it was vital now. She couldn’t find him like this, tangled up in reeking sheets and three day old clothing. He wasn’t even sure if he had eaten or if he had left a mess, or maybe it had been longer than three days and she was coming to collect his corpse and he really had melted—

“Tahno!”

He cringed and the muscles in his cheeks protested. He tried to get some words out, to tell her that he was fine and that she should leave, but his tongue was heavy and dry, and when he tried to speak there was nothing but a dull rasp in his throat.

Suddenly there was a crash and the sound of splintering wood filled the room. He flinched a bit and desperately tried to rearrange his face into haughty indifference. As if he had planned to lay here like this all along, as if her finding him half-dead was part of some grand and glamorous scheme. He’d leap up and cry _surprise, uh-vatar! I knew you’d be worried about me. I certainly got you._

“Tahno.” Her voice was hushed, out of horror or pity he couldn’t tell. He felt his lips purse and he refused to look at her. It wasn’t fair that she could fill a whole room up with her presence like this. He wasn’t going to give her the validation of looking.

“Yes?” he croaked. It was supposed to sound aloof but his voice cracked painfully halfway through and he closed his eyes. He hadn’t clawed himself up by his fingernails to be seen like this, especially by _her_. “What is it, Uh-vatar?”

She took a halting step forward. Then another. He could hear the wood fragments crackling under her boots and he held his breath as she drew closer. Finally, she stood over him. He kept his eyes tightly closed. He didn’t have to look to know that there would be nauseating sympathy, enough to make him retch up whatever water he had left in his system.

 _Water_.

“Tahno.” A cool, dry hand pressed on his forehead and he recoiled. “Tahno, look at me.” The pad of her thumb swept under his eye, over the black bags, and he sighed involuntarily. He didn’t know if it was her bending or her sheer presence but her touch always felt electric. He remembered how it drove him crazy in the ring, how the place where her knuckles had connected with his chin had seared for weeks afterwards.

His eyes flickered open to meet hers and she met him with a weak smile. She lowered herself down to sit on the bed and the springs groaned. “What happened, Tahno?”

He pressed his lips together and shook his head the best he could. “I don’t know.”

“Have you been eating?”

“I don’t know.”

Her forehead creased. “How long have you been here?”

“I don’t know.”

Her hand paused where it was stroking his jaw line to cup his face. “Tahno,” she whispered, “What’s wrong?”

He gave her a look, trying to hide the fear and frustration under the familiar identity—sleazy, irritable, and condescending. The identity had been so easy to slip in and out of, like slipping in and out of water. It had gotten harder of late and he found himself wondering if it had something to do with losing his  bending or if he had finally reached his emotional climax in life and this was the shrieking downhill slide.

“Are you really going to make me say I don’t know again? Because I can and it won’t change the fact that you’re sitting here in my nest of ruin.”

He expected more pity but she snorted. “Nest of ruin? At least you’re still as melodramatic as ever. When you stop, that’s when I’ll really start worrying.”

His lips stretched into a crooked smile and cracked. The taste of copper seeped into his mouth and he groaned, forcing his tongue over the wound. “Must you always find some way to hurt me?”

She laughed and even though it sounded forced, he had forgotten how validating it was to say something and have another sentient being respond the way he had wanted them to.

“I’m going to get you some water.”

He immediately stiffened, muscles locking and jaw tightening. She noticed and frowned. “Tahno, is this about water?”

He shook a bit and shot her a venomous look. “I don’t know.” He sounded plaintive and petty to his own ears but like hell he was admitting—

“Tahno, you can bend.”

She was repeated his mantra, the mantra he had listened to in his head for the last few godforsaken days and he snapped.

“Oh, really? Tell me something else I haven’t already noticed,” he spat.

She recoiled a bit from his sudden fury and her hand lifted from his face. “Tahno, I don’t understand, where is this coming from?”

“Of course you wouldn’t understand,” he sneered. The fury had come from nowhere but now that it was here, it was throbbing in his chest, demanding release. Maybe it had been building up this whole time, just waiting for an opportunity to break free. He could taste the poison of his words on his lips. “Of course you wouldn’t, not when you had everyone in the whole wide _fucking_ world rooting for you. Do you even know what it’s like to lie somewhere decomposing for a week or so because you can’t gather up the will to go look at the outside world filled with all its two-faced liars—“

“Tahno—“

“No,” he snapped. This was the most he was spoken in days and his mouth was getting used to speaking again and words just wouldn’t seem to stop flooding out. “No, because you’ve always been _worthy_. You’ve never been scum, Korra. You’ve never been rotten scum—you’ve never made that transition.”

“Tahno!” Her voice was loud and her eyes were bright with what might have been anger, sadness, and guilt all mixed together. “Tahno, I have never had the whole wide world rooting for me. Every step I take, everything I do, it’s all scrutinized for flaws. I thought you of all people understood that.”

He stayed silent, his chest still heaving from his outburst. His lungs felt weak, like they were fluttering in his chest. Guilt rolled over him in a massive wave and he let his head fall back into his pillow. The fury that had filled him sapped from his body leaving behind nothing but an overwhelming exhaustion and emptiness. “Spirits, Korra,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“Tahno?”

He wasn’t sure if she was more surprised that he was using her name or if he was but all of a sudden he was choking on nothing and his skin burned like he was melting again. Just like that he went from nothing to everything and it was enough it make his head spin. He heard her uncapping her water sack. He’d felt the water sloshing around the whole time and he’d been trying his hardest to ignore it but it was like a sickening siren call that made his temples throb. He sensed her bending and suddenly there was water touching his forehead, humming with healing energy.

He lost it.

He thrashed and kicked and tired to shout with scratchy throat but none of it worked. The gentle pressure was still there, spread over his temples and head. _He could bend. He could bend. He could bend._

He finally began to calm down, breathing ragged and muscles shivering. The firm hand that had been pressing him down into the bed lifted. The touch of the water was still there but it didn’t drive him insane anymore. In fact, it even felt good.

“Tahno?”

He choked and realized there was water gathering at the corners of his eyes and spilling down the sides of his face. Since he gained his pro-bending notoriety he hadn’t cried for years. These past few months after losing his bending and getting it back again, he had cried more than he ever had in his entire life.

He heard a sniff from above him and he looked up in shock. Sure enough, her eyes were red and she was looking down on him with a face filled with mixed emotions. “Tahno, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s ok,” he muttered. And then it wasn’t enough so he repeated, “It’s all ok.”

She reached out and clasped his hand and for the first time Tahno’s bending was restored, he didn’t feel like he was melting.

**Author's Note:**

> I just keep thinking that there's no way Tahno gets his bending back and everything is ok again. To have your very essence stripped away and then shoved back on you must have been disorienting to say the least.


End file.
